The last year has been fairly uneventful as far as online small business accounting websites are concerned. There have been no introductions of promising new all-encompassing applications, nor has any company whose name you'd recognize dropped out of the race. The major players continue their march toward integration with related web-based services. Mobile apps keep getting better, and everyone tweaks and fixes and updates existing features.

Technology has made it possible for clients to access their financial data from anywhere at any time. Your clients can load an app on their phone to handle finances and help them make important decisions on the go. IMHO, that makes our profession more valuable than ever. And it makes write-up software more valuable than ever.

For nonprofit software vendors, along with their customers and pretty much everyone else, the focus in 2014 is on relationships. These vendors have had to expand their view beyond applications that are traditionally accounting focused into solutions that are more about people, connections, and service.

The shift is underway to meld document management – the traditional process of managing source documents and client files – with workflow management. The result has been a burst of innovations, updates and new entrants to the marketplace for firm management.